Darkfall

by Isobelle Carmody

  Hella, wearing a fixed smile, pretended not to notice but Glynn was close enough to see her lips tremble with the effort.

  ‘You’d better stop that,’ she whispered. ‘Your face paint is starting to look like a death mask.’

  Hella gave her an astonished look, then she relaxed and laughed. Glynn was pleased to notice Saxa could not restrain himself from looking back at his former betrothed. ‘He looked over then. Let him hear you laugh and see how little it matters to you that he’s thrown you over. Men only ever want what they can’t have anyway. That poor girl he’s dancing with hasn’t a clue. If she wants him, she should be acting as if she’s bored out of her mind.’

  ‘Oh, Glynn, you say such extraordinary things,’ Hella smiled tremulously. ‘I do not know how I would have borne this without you.’

  ‘You would have been fine,’ Glynn said stoutly. ‘Besides, it is partly my fault all this happened. Solen would not have been back late except for me. I should never have fallen asleep in that coracle, but how could I know what would come of it?’

  ‘Solen does not blame you. He said there was a storming that would have blown the ship off course even if it had not turned to Eron isle. And what should he have done even if he had known what would come of the delay? He could not leave you in the water.’

  Glynn was not so sure of that. Several times Solen had all but admitted to regretting his impulse, but she did not want to hurt Hella by saying so. Saxa passed again, leading the puppy girl back to her seat. Hella did not notice.

  ‘Who knows but that the Song did not bring you to us for its own reasons,’ she said dreamily, picking at the wax driblet down the side of a sculpted rock candle-holder.

  Glynn had a sudden vision of the old man in the taverna on her own world, singing a song that she had later heard again in the water, just before the cold came. Her skin prickled. Nema had spoken of a portal between worlds, but Glynn could remember no portal. Only water and more water and a song.

  ‘I see from your face you are thinking of home.’

  Glynn regarded Hella with surprise.

  ‘My friend, I know you must think often of Fomhika, for is it not true that sept is in the blood and heart? I only hope we have not brought trouble on you, for Jurass questioned you as severely as he did me, and I am not sure he believed either of us.’

  ‘He has to prove we lied,’ Glynn said, hoping that was true. ‘For all Jurass knows, Flay lied to Solen about wanting to be a white cloak and when Solen was seen with her at the landing, he could have been trying to talk her out of offering herself. All we have to do is speak to Solen before Jurass questions him and warn him of what to say.’

  Hella smiled at her warmly. ‘Again you fill me with hope when I despair. Though it is truly selfish of me, I am glad that I will have the gift of your company until you earn passage to Fomhika.’

  Glynn wanted to tell the Acanthan girl about the darklin then, but there was a great scraping sound from the dance floor and, like everyone else, she craned her neck to see what was happening. A tall man and an even taller woman were wrestling an enormous, ornately fashioned harp into the centre of the hall while the dancers resumed their seats. A stool was brought, and the woman seated herself at the instrument, while the man took up his position beside her, locking his fingers together.

  ‘Balladeers?’ Glynn hazarded.

  Hella nodded as the woman began to strum the harp strings, creating a sound like the whisper of air through trees. The man began to beat on a flat drum with a small double-ended hammer, setting up a simple, hypnotic rumbling reminiscent of a distant storm.

  ‘I will tell the tale of Shenavyre, who drew Lanalor to his doom by the will of the Unraveller demon …’ the man announced in a deep, resonant voice.

  Glynn felt Hella stiffen, and caught her eye warningly. The last thing they needed was for Hella to lose her head in religious fervour.

  The Draaka’s eyes moved across the audience and the rustling ceased, leaving Glynn to remember what Nema had said about silence being catching. The mere fact of this music being permitted was significant. The balladeer went on to tell of Shenavyre, a Sheannite woman with soulweaving tendencies that had led her to segue in the Void, where she had encountered and had been enslaved by the Unraveller demon in fair guise.

  ‘Though she could see it not, the demon wore a crown of leaping flames of red and gold,’ he cried dramatically. ‘It had one eye in the centre of its forehead. A huge, blazing spirit eye that could see through flesh and into the soul. Its natural eyes on either side were black and useless, but it did not need them, for the drear beast could smell all things – the shape and texture and even the colour – as if with clearest vision. Its words bestowed madness on whosoever heard them, but its touch was death …’

  The balladeer had bent himself into a humped shape and squinted around at his audience, playing the part of the Unraveller. So great was the power of his storytelling that people at the tables cringed whenever his gaze came in their direction.

  He acted out the seduction of Shenavyre by the disguised demon, revealing his hideous face only when she looked away.

  ‘A man there was called Lanalor, who loved Shenavyre …’ he said, and then he acted out Shenavyre’s enchanting of Lanalor, pleading in a surprisingly accurate feminine voice that he release her dearest companion from the Void.

  ‘Lanalor vowed he would give his life to release one so loved by his beloved, and thus did Lanalor attack the wall of the Void with his powers. But before it was breached and the waiting demon Unraveller freed, the Void’s guardian sealed the hole and drove Lanalor back.

  ‘In rage, the Unraveller demon forced Shenavyre to kill herself, then it sought out the distraught Lanalor in the same sweet guise projected from the Void, to tell him of her death.’

  The balladeer acted out Lanalor’s grief. Then he became the demon in its disguise telling Lanalor that if it were freed from the Void, it would be able to restore Shenavyre to life. The balladeer showed the audience Lanalor’s elation, managing to imbue it with a manic quality, then he told how Lanalor had sealed the body of Shenavyre into ice so that it would not deteriorate, and sent it into the sea where none could break the seals that kept it. This done, he gave himself entire, the balladeer sang, to breaking the Void and releasing the Unraveller.

  Shades of Sleeping Beauty, thought Glynn, intrigued to find yet another parallel between this world and her own.

  Before his work could be completed, the balladeer announced, Lanalor died, but he charged his sister, Alyda, to carry on his work, bestowing on her all of his secrets and exacting from her the promise that she would release the Unraveller so that it could resurrect his beloved Shenavyre from her ice tomb beneath the waves. Playing Alyda, the balladeer vowed piously to obey but, turning aside, assumed a grasping leer.

  The balladeer resumed the wise and noble expression he had affected as the narrator and warned his audience that although the guardian managed to prevent Lanalor breaking open the Void, Darkfall’s activities had begun to weaken its walls and the Unraveller waited still for the breach that would let it into the world.

  The balladeer fell silent, as the wind sound made by the harp strings swelled up again and the drum beat quickened; then it, too, fell silent.

  The applause which followed was loud and prolonged and Glynn clapped too, out of sheer appreciation for the brilliant performance of the balladeer. When she noticed Hella staring at her incredulously she modified her clapping, though she did not stop. ‘Hella, we have to clap. People will notice if we don’t. For Solen’s sake, you must!’

  Hella swallowed and made a pretence of applause. All around them, people were hurling money at the balladeer. He was bowing and smiling while his accompanist collected the bounty. Glynn noticed there were several people clapping with expressions as blank as Hella’s.

  When the applause began to die down, the talk rose in a wave as the performers departed.

  ‘That was an interesting interpretation of t
he Legendsong, was it not?’ the woman sitting one along from Glynn said. Two spots of colour burned in her cheeks. ‘I have not seen Lanalor played as a tragic hero before. Everyone plays him as a madman.’

  ‘I prefer him mad, slavering and growling like the hound of his demon master,’ a younger man said.

  ‘Yes, but that interpretation is so common. This was far more subtle and intelligent.’

  ‘Marridoc is a good performer,’ another woman agreed. ‘One of our finest. I have heard the Draaka speak of the Unraveller and I have seen the demon played in many ways these last seasons, but tonight my blood ran cold at the thought of that sly thing he conjured up, waiting.’

  ‘I do not like the interpretation of Shenavyre as an innocent,’ one of the men complained. ‘Marridoc made both her and Lanalor victims but Shenavyre was the demon’s willing collaborator. She is not believable played as an innocent.’

  ‘I agree his Shenavyre was weak, but see how this version cleverly takes up the myth of the Firstmade without mentioning it?’ someone else argued. ‘Obviously the fair face assumed by the demon was the Firstmade. That could not have been introduced except if Shenavyre was an innocent.’

  ‘I think it was a very honest retelling,’ an older woman said and those around her listened respectfully. ‘Children, you know I have not liked all this talk of Lanalor as a beast, nor this slandering of the soulweavers, for did they not heal my own son who was near death, and is not one of my mother’s sisters on the misty isle? But it has come to me tonight that Darkfall may be deceived, for, truly, I have never understood how they so willingly let themselves be blinded.’

  ‘It is symbolic, perhaps,’ one of the men murmured thoughtfully. ‘They must be blind not to see that Tarsin is destroying them, even while they uphold his right to rule. In the same way, they may not know that their activities are weakening the Void.’

  ‘I liked best the balladeer’s recasting of the old symbols the soulweavers claim will mark the Unraveller,’ a girl said. ‘Crowned by flame has always been read as symbolic, but if it meant no more than it said, that would even explain the obscure lines about gold hair in the Legendsong, for is not flame red and gold?’

  ‘And having only a spirit eye could be read as half-blind,’ another girl said excitedly. Then she shuddered. ‘Thinking of the Unraveller will give me nightmares hereafter.’

  ‘It should give us all nightmares,’ a man said soberly. ‘Imagine if it escaped from the Void.’

  As the talk turned to other matters, Glynn whispered to Hella, ‘It was just a song.’

  ‘It was just a Song that made the world and us,’ Hella said intensely. ‘And all songs echo the Song of Making, and so the blasphemy was worse. Was it not Shenavyre’s songs that drew the Firstmade to her? Was it not a false song that trapped the Firstmade in eternal darkness? Did you not mark how this older woman at our table was swayed by the balladeer’s song, though her mother’s own sister is a soulweaver? By the Horn, Nema warned me but I did not imagine …’

  ‘Don’t get angry and do anything stupid. Think of Solen,’ Glynn whispered urgently.

  Hella’s eyes were dark with misery. ‘I am not angry, my friend. I am too scared to be angry. What is happening to the world?’

  Glynn opened her mouth to ask if she wanted to leave, but Hella looked beyond her and whitened. ‘Oh no. Please!’ she moaned.

  Glynn turned to see Solen, dressed in stark black except for the purple legionnaire’s cloak, standing in the arched opening to the wing-hall cavern. His face was not painted so his lack of expression was evident to all.

  At a signal from Jurass, Solen walked the length of the hall in a measured stride, but as he stopped in front of the dais, he staggered visibly. Drunk, Glynn thought, watching him bow in the way of the legion, one hand folded across his chest.

  The chieftain scowled down at him. ‘By what right do you come here wearing wing colours when you have been stripped of the mark? And in this state.’

  ‘I come because you summoned me, and I am in this state because I was celebra … celebrating the end of a foul tour of duty in the Teeth,’ Solen said in a slurred voice that carried clearly throughout the room.

  ‘That was before they told me I was to be dismissed from the legion. As for this?’ He lifted the cloak. ‘I return in person what was given in this very chamber by chieftain Argosy.’ He fumbled at his shoulder and unsnapped the fastening that held the cloak to his wing suit, before letting it fall to the ground to lie at his feet. It would have been a gesture of contempt if he were not so obviously inebriated.

  He stood motionless, poised like a black blade. Even the harness on his back was black. Glynn could have wept at the proud look of him because it was an illusion.

  She remembered his agonised words to her: ‘I am what I must be …’

  ‘I summoned you here to be judged,’ Jurass said coldly.

  ‘I am here to be judged for my disobedience,’ Solen said.

  ‘What you did was more than disobedience!’ The chieftain’s thin voice sounded almost shrill. ‘It was base and treacherous. Do you deny you took your sister, Flay, secretly to Darkfall where she will be mutilated and given to the darkness, though I have utterly forbidden it? Do you deny that your sister, Hella, and the Fomhikan girl who dwells with you knew of this treachery?’

  Glynn froze.

  Solen said, ‘I took Flay because she insisted I take her and when a woman with a tongue like a viper insists, what can a man do but obey? As to my other sister, the virtuous Hella, I can only say we are … not close. She is so full of advice on how I can improve myself that it hurts my ears to hear her. The other … She is nothing to me. A mere chance-met forced on me by Carick wavespeaker, and truly I have avoided her for it aches my eyes to look on her as she comes each day from the minescrape reeking of sweat and dirt. Accuse me of what you will, but I do have some taste.’

  There was a titter of laughter as Solen staggered again. Glynn felt as if someone had lit a fire inside her, but it burned cold as ice. She did not understand why the scathing assessment of a drunk could affect her so savagely. Perhaps it was because tonight, for the first time in her life, she had felt beautiful.

  Hella was roused from fear and shock by what she saw in Glynn’s face. ‘He does not mean it,’ she whispered urgently. ‘He is drunk and does not know what he says. If he had seen you as you are now …’

  ‘Shh. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘As to Flay deciding to become a soulweaver, I wish she had not,’ Solen continued, ‘but there is no law in the Charter that forbids a girl offering herself to Darkfall.’

  ‘Do you say then that I forbid unlawfully?’ Jurass asked ominously.

  There was a slight pause, as if Solen were considering his next words. ‘It is not my place to call my chieftain unlawful.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Jurass snarled, jumping to his feet. ‘You call me unlawful by refusing to answer.’

  Solen blinked up at him in surprise. ‘I do not call you unlawful. I say only that it is not my place to lay such a charge. I come here to be judged by my chieftain. As an Acanthan, I do honour to the chieftain of my sept.’

  Solen’s words were impeccably respectful and a baffled look passed across Jurass’s face. ‘Do you say you honour me?’

  ‘I say I honour the position of chieftain.’

  Jurass coloured. ‘Speak plainly, will you! Do you say I am wrong in declaring Darkfall out of bounds?’

  ‘I declare nothing. It is not my place, but Lanalor said “even a Holder may be wrong”. Is that not why a soulweaver is appointed to the Holder’s side?’

  ‘Don’t quote at me,’ Jurass snapped. ‘You disobeyed me. To disobey a chieftain is treason, and there can be only one punishment. That is for you to be broken on the wheel and then hurled to your death from the cliffs.’

  There was a shocked reaction from those watching and Hella pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, but Solen did not appear concerned. Glynn wondered if he had even unders
tood.

  The Draaka made a movement and Jurass turned to her. ‘Lady? You would speak?’

  She inclined her head gracefully and looked down at Solen with clear compassion. ‘I sorrow at the fallen state of one who showed so much promise. We must not blame Solen for what he has become. We must pity him. As long as Darkfall exists, there will be girls like Flay drawn to it, and weak men like Solen, drawn into the vortex by them. We must not fight the symptoms of this illness, but the cause of it. We must lance this wound once and for all, and let the poisons secreted within flow away. Solen comes of great blood and we need his kind to strengthen us, and so I ask of you, my chieftain, that you give this man to me – perhaps in the haven he might be resurrected from the darkness. Let your judgment stand for the man who is before us now, but let me try to make of him another man who will freely confess his foolish, wrong-headed actions. Give him to me and I vow that when next he stands before you, he will renounce his allegiance to Darkfall, reaffirming his fealty to his own sept. He will be a man again instead of this poor thing who weaves on his feet and dribbles as he talks.’

  Jurass turned to Solen. ‘How say you? Are you in your wits enough to understand the mercy and grace that has been offered you by the Draaka?’

  For a time Solen did not answer; when he did, the austerity of his face recalled Glynn to her first impression of him as a monk. ‘She is right in one thing. I am my father’s son. I will not renounce Darkfall. Not now or ever, for only by its work, and by the coming of the Unraveller from beyond the mists, will the Firstmade restore its sweet light to the world. If I must die for my beliefs, then so be it. They are worth dying for. But if I must die then it will be as my father did, and not broken by the hatred of an ignoble chieftain who would plunge the world into darkness for his petty hurts.’

  Before anyone could react, Solen darted sideways through the columns and plunged into the crowd of diners on the other side of the room.

  ‘Seize him,’ Jurass screamed.